French President Emmanuel Macron appointed as the most important ally Francois Bayrou On Friday he was named his fourth prime minister of 2024, but the scale of the challenge facing the veteran centrist was immediately clear when the Socialist Party refused to join his coalition government.
Bayrou, 73, offered a sober assessment of whether he could tame a stalemate parliament that toppled his predecessor Michel Barnier just last week.
“It’s a long road, everyone knows that,” he told reporters. “I’m not the first to go a long way.”
France’s simmering political malaise has raised doubts about whether Macron will complete his second term as president until 2027.
It has also increased France’s borrowing costs and left a power vacuum in the heart of Europe just as Donald Trump heads to the White House and Germany prepares for new elections after the collapse of its ruling coalition.
Bayrou, the founder of the Democratic Movement (MoDem) party, which has been part of Macron’s governing alliance since 2017, has himself run for president three times, drawing on his rural roots as the long-time mayor of the southwestern city of Pau.
His immediate priority will be passing a special law extending the 2024 budget, with a worse battle over 2025 austerity bills looming early next year.
Parliamentary opposition to the 2025 bill led to Barnier’s ouster, and left-wing leaders announced on Friday that they may try to topple Bayrou too if he uses special constitutional powers to push through the budget against parliament.
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Bayrou’s proximity to the deeply unpopular Macron could also prove to be a weak point.
The Socialist Party, which courted Macron during his search for prime minister, accused the president of ignoring their demands for a left-wing leader in favor of a “risky” Macronist.
“We will therefore not enter the government and remain in the opposition,” said Boris Vallaud, the leader of the Socialist group.
The reaction to Bayrou’s appointment on the left will worry Macron, as the prime minister will likely be at the mercy of the president’s opponents day after day for the foreseeable future.
Macron hopes Bayrou can fend off the no-confidence votes at least until July, when France can hold a new general election.
Leaders of the far-left France Unbowed party said they would seek to unseat Bayrou immediately, while leaders of other left-wing parties took a more nuanced approach.
Green Party leader Marine Tondelier also said she would support a motion of no confidence if the prime minister ignored her tax and pension concerns.
Communist leader Fabien Roussel said his party would take action against Bayrou and decide on a case-by-case basis whether he promises not to enforce laws.
Jordan Bardella, president of the far-right National Rally (RN) party, said she would not call for an immediate no-confidence motion, while RN colleague Marine Le Pen said Bayrou should listen to the opposition’s budget wishes.
The real test of the 2025 budget is coming
Barnier’s budget proposal, which proposed 60 billion euros ($63 billion) in savings to reassure investors increasingly concerned about France’s 6% deficit, was seen as too meager by the far right and left. The government’s failure to find a way out of the stalemate has caused French borrowing costs to rise.
XTB research director Kathleen Brooks said Bayrou’s appointment was unlikely to have a major impact on French bonds. However, she said France’s CAC 40 .FCHI stock index had underperformed German stocks for three decades.
“With France still mired in political turmoil, narrowing this divide is an uphill battle, even with a new prime minister,” she wrote.
Macron appointed Bayrou justice minister in 2017 but resigned just weeks later amid an investigation into the alleged fraudulent hiring of his party’s parliamentary assistants. He was acquitted of fraud charges this year.
–Reporting by Dominique Vidalon; additional reporting by Michel Rose and Elizabeth Pineau; Writing by Gabriel Stargardter; Edited by Richard Lough, Angus MacSwan and Ros Russell
